[The hyperactive child: diagnosis and therapy]

After briefly defining the hyperkinetic disorder of childhood the typical process of clinical assessment is described. The latter includes the psychiatric interview with parents, child and teachers, the history of the child, the use of questionnaires and rating scales, neuropsychological testing and the physical examination of the child. Careful consideration of differential diagnoses is mandatory in order to avoid false negative and false positive diagnoses. The etiology is dominated by neurobiological concepts with a special emphasis on genetic causes. Treatment is multimodal giving special weight to pharmacotherapy with stimulants.